Abstract
Introduction: Alzheimer as a prevalent central nervous system disease has no definitive treatment yet. So, regarding to herbal medicine recommendation, an important candidate herb, Crocus sativus L. extract (CSE) was investigated on ICV STZ-induced learning, memory, and cognitive impairment in male rats.
Objective: The Effect of aqueous crocus sativus L. extract on intracerebroventricular streptozotocin-induced cognitive deficits in male rat.
Materials and Methods: We use STZ injection as a model for Alzheimer's disease. For this purpose due to an animal stereotaxic surgery, the rats were injected with STZ-icv bilaterally, on 1st and 3rd days (3 mg/kg). The learning and memory performance was assessed using passive avoidance paradigm, and for spatial cognition evaluation, Y maze task was used. Sixty male rats were divided to following groups: 1- Control, 2- Sham (which received only ACSF), 3-Control + CSE, 4-STZ, 5-STZ+CSE. The STZ-injected rats received CSE (30 mg/kg i.p.). These rats were treatment one day before surgery for three weeks and then were subjected to learning and memory tests. In Y maze test the non repetitive percentage of arm entrance were considered as alternation behavior (intelligence quotient). Data in Passive avoidance task was the latent period (s) for passing from light to dark room due to adaptation periods. However, for the passive avoidance test nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test was used, which if significant, was followed by Mann-Whitney U-test for pair-wise comparisons. Data for the Y maze task were evaluated by Wilcoxon’s rank sum test
Results: It was found that CSE-treated STZ-injected rats showed higher correct choices and lower errors in Y maze than vehicle-treated STZ-injected rats. In addition, CSE administration significantly attenuated learning and memory impairment in treated STZ-injected group in passive avoidance test.
Conclusion: These results demonstrated the effectiveness of CSE in preventing the cognitive deficits caused by STZ-icv in rats and its potential in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.